I knew I should be afraid

I woke up this morning with an inescapable sense that I should be afraid.

It was still dark out, which meant the monsters still hadn’t crawled back under my bed after a night of child-noshing. The meat in the fridge was only a day old, so I wasn’t forced to face my latent paranoia that food poisoning is becoming an actual sentient creature. My wife was still in bed, so I doubted she was sleeping with anyone else (although I checked under the covers to be sure there weren’t any height-disadvantaged paramours doing their dirty work).

Nope, all seemed well as I walked into the dark garage. All was well, that is, except for the fact that I should’ve just stayed in bed. Nay, it wasn’t the fire ants at the park, the loads of work on my plate, or the ever-increasing evidence that I’m about to turn 97 (or something close to it). No, it was only that I should’ve been afraid and I wasn’t.

What should I have been afraid of?

Muslims, to start.

On this day, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Muslim folks begin their Ramadan fasting. It’s a religious thing for them, and probably just another way of showing us that they are only dedicated to overthrowing the American government. No daylight Mac-N-Cheese equals revolution, or so I’ve been led to believe. I wasn’t aware that’s what Muslims had in mind when they fasted from dawn to sunset, so I’m fortunate that Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association clued me in. In his call for all future mosques to be verboten in the U.S., he laid it out straight: “Bottom line: it’s suicidal for America to allow terrorist training cells to crop up all over the fruited plain. And each mosque is an actual or potential terrorist training cell…”

Thank heavens for Fischer. Really. I’m surprised we hadn’t thought of the mosque ban earlier. It should’ve been obvious after we started banning all the Christian churches in the wake of radical attacks by Eric Robert Rudolph, Tim McVeigh, and the like. Somebody really dropped the ball on the mosque thing. Just to be safe, I’m going to blame the gays.

God Bryan Fischer, help us, but the gays want to marry. The voters of California had their God-given right to vote (I’ve always wondered why God didn’t grant women and blacks the right to vote for so long) taken away by a light-in-the-loafers judge who declared Prop 8 to be unconstitutional. Again, this opened the door to people who love each other having the chance to get married. It’s heresy, this whole love thing.

That America ever let loose-moraled Northerners discover wedded bliss was a mistake of epic proportions. Now, not only the gays want to marry, but gay Californians(!), which I’m told is as much redundant as it is frightening. If Mike and Ike end up getting hitched in Bakersfield, the implications on my South Carolina family are uncountable. The civil rights we have worked so hard to grant to blacks will pale under the laissez faire approach regarding who gets to love each other. Our efforts to remove the flag of the Confederacy from our Capitol Dome might just seem quaint by comparison.

Of couse, Maryland Bishop Harry Jackson says don’t pay so much attention to that civil rights thing. And damn right he should say that, because we need to keep our eye on the ball. Jackson writes, “A marriage requires a husband and a wife, because these unions are necessary to make new life and connect children to their mother and father.” If somebody had made it clearer for me earlier, I might have been able to better protest the marriages of my friends who have chosen not to have children, or perhaps more importantly, the marriages of my friends who couldn’t have children for one reason or another. Sham marriages, all of them!

My foremost concern, of course, is about the psyche of the people who believe in God. I wasn’t aware, but if two women get married in San Diego, it would make people all over the country question their own faith. Who knew? Jackson knew. He writes, “It will create a conflict for people of faith (and nonreligious people as well) who fervently believe in traditional man-woman marriage and the law.” If people of faith are conflicted, how will this country survive?

Finally, if gays marry, Jackson tells us, it’s going skew our concept of what a family should be. Quoting here: “If gay marriage is allowed, the nation will soon begin to experience an increased degradation of the nuclear family — resulting in fewer kids being raised by both a mom and a dad.” Indeed, fewer, my friends, than the current number of children who are being raised by a single mom or dad after a death, divorce, imprisonment, or in-home estrangement. That is, if we see two people of the same sex in love, our country is doomed to fail .

I, however, have been able to work out a compromise that should keep us all from being afraid. See, I’ve recently been informed about the terror and security-destroying threat of a particular sect of sleeper cells. Where are they sleeping?

Cribs, man. Effing cribs.

My friend Elise reports from Texas that in-the-know State Representatives there have become rightfully concerned about the pressing issue of terrorist babies,–otherwise known as babies born under the rights granted to them by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution–who at conception are being groomed to overthrow the U.S. government. It’s a prospect so scary that I’m not entirely sure I want my kids sleeping in my house tonight.

But here’s the compromise: We let Muslims build mosques if they agree to only admit gay worshippers. See…if they’re gay, no babies, and if no babies…you got it, Mssrs. Jackson and Fischer…no terrorist babies.

10 Responses

These terrorbabies are the most fearsome thing yet! Former FBI agents, who I won’t name, have provided evidence, which I won’t reveal, that they could be a potential threat… maybe.

They say you do the most learning in those early years. I know this is true, because I learned to talk and walk as a baby, and I STILL do those things today! What if I’d been taught to walk terroristically? Or what if my first words were “cookie” or “mama”, both of them being code for nefarious things I’m sure.

Also, as is WELL-documented in America, kids ALWAYS turn out the way their parents expect them to. Never, NEVER, in the history of parenting has a child followed their own path or been influenced by their peers. This is why there are so many doctors and lawyers and so few illiterate losers on the drugs. Obviously these babies can be easily trained over their lifetimes by parents who are only focused on the end game, and not on the well-being of their child.

Not to mention that in the 20 years before these babies will carry out their training, NOTHING could possibly change in attitudes between countries and cultures.

Finally, and this is the most important point – this MAY already be going on! What if, say, 40 or 50 years ago, an Ayatollah sent some people to have babies in Texas, but even more nefariously – WHITE babies. Then they grew up to become idiotic, bigotted, brainless politicians who would use their pulpits to spread fear and insecurity to cover up their OWN nefarious plans! Would we even see these people now?

Just so I’m clear, when I marry my boyfriend next year (here in that bastion of “San Francisco values”–Iowa) we can invite the thrice-divorced serial adulterer Newt Gingrich to our reception, but only if we convert to Islam first?

I am not a media type, but I love “that freedom of speech thing.” I’ve observed that loving that is more of an American thing than a media thing.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to me that Otis is saying that those who are fomenting fear of Muslims and gays and Mexicans shouldn’t be allowed to say what they are saying. He just seems to be pointing out that what they are saying is harmful and foolish and more than a little anti-freedom.

Putting aside the stupidity of terrorist babies and the anti-gay marriage lobby, the discussion of the 14th amendment brings up some interesting philosophical and ethical questions. The original intent of the amendment was to ensure that states would not discriminate (ha) against former slaves because they were not citizens. The idea that children of non-citizens born in the US are citizens did not originate with the amendment, but stemmed from a case involving the children of Chinese immigrants in 1898. The concept of illegal immigration was not really in place at that time, and the parents of the children were not breaking the law, in danger of being deported, or working outside the “normal” workforce. However this is the basis for stating citizenship is granted to all children born to immigrants on American soil. Because of this now we have these major ethical questions. What do you do with the kids when the parents get deported? If the parents go to social services to get aid for the kids, which the kids as citizens are entitled to, shouldn’t they call the police on the parents since they are breaking the law? I assume they would if they parents were breaking any other law. Should the parents benefit from the social benefits obtained for the citizen children (food stamps, WIC, etc)? How do you send benefits to an address of known illegal immigrants and not send the police to arrest the people breaking the law? If the family were breaking any other law, would you support the police not being sent in to enforce the law? Just something to think about.

Oh, and everyone has the right to free speech, but everyone has the responsibility to use it wisely.